


for a moment at a time

by saltstreets



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 14:57:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3982318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the whirlwind he can’t quite marshal how he feels about being suddenly kissed in a very real fashion by Xabi Alonso, he can’t even really understand how he feels about anything right then and all that rot about a kiss lasting a lifetime is just that: rot, because it’s incredibly quick and over so soon and Stevie just laughs riotously, amazedly, and Xabi, grinning right back into the crook of Stevie’s neck, whispers “We did it, we are champions.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	for a moment at a time

**Author's Note:**

> JUDGE: ao3 user saltstreets, you have been summoned to this court under the charges of having written an Istanbul fic here in this the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Fifteen, a full ten years after the match in question, how do you plead?
> 
> ME: guilty, your Honour, as due to recent events I have chosen to live in the past and I regret nothing.
> 
> JUDGE: ao3 user saltstreets, you are hereby declared gerlonso trash. Go to jail
> 
> ME: ya I kno
> 
>  
> 
> Title is a lyric from [Champion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hlVHOlwY74) by Trocadero

 

 

The air is noise.

The air is noise and red and commotion and joy and _triumph,_ the air is _triumph_. In the whirlwind, it’s all Stevie can do to cling to some shred of who he is, to prevent himself from going completely mad and leaping about howling, losing his sense of self to his sense of _victory,_ because he’s not sure anything else could really capture how he’s feeling.

There’s red and white confetti blinding him and there’s the collective roar of a stadium that’s just witnessed a miracle. A goddamn miracle, Stevie thinks without a trace of irony and there’s a silver cup in his hands streaming with his colours and lights shining and the noise, oh god the noise is wonderful, fantastic. He’s overwhelmed and wants to stay here forever in this moment in time, in this rush of feeling.

He remembers being shepherded with the rest of the team into a semblance of lines for a photograph, and he remembers crouching with Xabi in the front. The cameras are flashing and Stevie’s grin is competing with his heart for size and he turns to Xabi and purses his lips in a kissy face, for a laugh, so there’ll be a cheesy photo somewhere of the two of them that they can have a chuckle over later, and he remembers Xabi looking at him with wide glorious eyes and he remembers Xabi not fulfilling his expected role, not pursing his mouth and copying the mock kiss but instead leaning in and quick as lightning pressing his lips to Stevie’s.

Oh yeah, Stevie remembers _that_.

In the whirlwind he can’t quite marshal how he feels about being suddenly kissed in a very real fashion by Xabi Alonso, he can’t even really understand how he feels about anything right then so he just pulls away after a brief microsecond, really just the smallest fraction of time, and all that rot about a kiss lasting a lifetime is just that: rot, because it’s incredibly quick and over so soon ( _too soon_ , muses a voice at the back of Stevie’s brain but the noise of the victory is too loud for him to take any notice of it) and Stevie just laughs riotously, amazedly, his arm still around Xabi’s shoulders and Xabi, grinning right back, nestles his face into the crook of Stevie’s neck, breathing out against his collarbone and whispering _“We did it, we are champions.”_

In that moment he’s so full of joy, so in love –in love with a lot of things, with his team, his city, the supporters who have travelled so far and with so much hope, a lot of things- that he can’t quite parse out which emotions belong where or to whom. All he knows is that he is fiercely, irrefutably, in love.

Later things are quieter. The red and white confetti has been shaken out of his hair and the dirt and sweat of the win have been showered away. Things are quieter but he can still feel Istanbul shaking with the steady beat of thousands of voices cheering, chanting, celebrating deep into the night, the heartbeat dragged across half a continent thrumming out _Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool._

It’s four in the morning and he’s stumbling back to his room, hearing the muffled laughter from the hall and through the walls as his teammates find their ways back to their beds after god-knows _far_ too many hours of exuberant drinking and cheering and some truly awful dancing.

Stevie’s eyes are beginning to burn with tiredness and he knows he ought to crash onto his bed and try for a few hours of rest before they have to pack up and out and return to Merseyside, back into the arms of the hundreds and thousands who are waiting for them, who have been crouched in front of their television sets biting their nails and feeling the panic and gritting their teeth and then fucking _exploding_ with joy, all along with the team and the lucky ones who had been in the stadium that night. A few hours of sleep and then he can be back in Liverpool, with the people who may not have been there in the physical sense of the word, but had been more than present in spirit.

And god does Liverpool have a lot of spirit.

Stevie thinks about it and his heart _hurts_ with love again. He walks over to the glass doors set in the wall next to his bed and slides them open to step out onto the hotel room balcony. The warm air sweeps over him and he hears birds beginning to chirp as the city creeps closer to dawn. He settles against the railing, looks out over Istanbul, and thinks about Liverpool.

He turns around at the sound of a door opening behind him and sees Xabi come spilling into their shared hotel room, hair all sticking up to one side and shirt half soaked in an unknown liquid that’s more than likely alcoholic in nature. He meets Steven’s eyes as the latter steps back into the room and he grins. “It is Carra.” he explains to Stevie’s unasked question. “He has poured a beer on me. I do not know why.” Xabi doesn’t seem particularly put out by the fact, although it might be because he’s simply too drunk to care rather than due any unusual level of Jamie Carragher tolerance that he might have. He sways slightly where he stands, lending credence to the former theory, and just grins. Stevie looks at him and feels his heart hurt again with that love, that love he’s been feeling all night and this time it’s directed at something smaller than a club or a city and less abstract than a jersey or a title. This time it’s directed pretty singularly at the man standing two metres away, bedraggled and exhausted and not looking his best but he’s _glowing_ with the brilliant flame of something like those big abstract loves, all beautiful and triumphant and Stevie feels a tug towards him, similar to the draw he feels towards his team mates after scoring, some drive to fall into Xabi’s arms and hold him.

He wants to say something and he can feel the words welling up in his throat, but because of the hours they’ve been awake or the alcohol consumed or maybe just the universe deciding it wasn’t quite right, they get caught and tumble about in his mouth and all he can do is grin back.

Xabi walks over, his lilting, tripping gait exaggerated in his current state, and grabs at Stevie’s shoulders, spinning him around and pushing him back out onto the balcony. “Look Steven,” Xabi says earnestly, his accent melting the words even more than usual. “Look at our city.”

Stevie laughs but dutifully looks out across the rooftops. “This isn’t our city, Xabs,” he reminds him. “That’d be Liverpool.”

Xabi shakes his head, hands still on Stevie’s shoulders, his thumbs absent-mindedly rubbing small circles against the back of his neck. “No, tonight this _is_ Liverpool,” he says almost dreamily. “All of Europe. Everything. _Liverpool._ You and me and...” he trails off, a tiny crease worrying his forehead as he looks for a word. “Everything. The, the infinity.” He leans up against Stevie’s back, nose rubbing between his shoulder blades. “Sorry. I am, ah, a bit drunk.” He laughs into the fabric of Stevie’s shirt.

“I know mate,” Stevie says teasingly, enjoying the warmth of another body pressed up close to him, the comforting and familiar feel of Xabi tucked neatly against his spine, hands clasped over his shoulders and elbows knocking against Stevie’s upper arms in a quasi-hug like he’d just scored a goal. “I was there while you were doing most of the drinking what’s got you to this point, remember?”

He wasn’t complaining. As was being proven, drunk Xabi tended to be affectionate, and Stevie was craving affection, he himself more than just a bit tipsy and so full of this love that he couldn’t quite pin down.

“Do you know what I mean, still?” Xabi is saying, earnestly. “Tonight we are Liverpool.”

Stevie shifts and turns around, displacing Xabi from his back so that they could stand side-by-side and he could sling an arm over Xabi’s shoulders, not minding that the beer all over Xabi’s shirt was steadily soaking into his own. “Yeah, I know what y’mean.”

He does too, at that. There is a sense of utter completeness that he’s only felt a few times before in his career. When he first signed, when he was made captain, and now, champions of Europe. An overwhelming feeling of club, contentment, and belonging.

He’s glad Xabi can feel it too. Xabi, of whom he’d been at first distrustful _(The deadpan doubt he’d felt when Benitez had introduced them, trying not to let it show in his eyes but nervous nonetheless)_ but who now was such an integral piece to that completeness, to that Liverpool and that _love_ that Stevie was almost drowning in.

Xabi tucks himself securely against Stevie and nestles his face into the crook of his neck. “Congratulations, skipper,” he says, words muffled in Stevie’s skin and by his own accent. “ _Campeones_. Not bad.”

Stevie shivers, trying not to think too hard about Xabi nosing his way into that same place hours earlier, after the win, after. Well, after kissing him, and he’s thinking of it now anyway, he’s thinking of Xabi’s lips on his for that one burning split-second, amidst the noise and the lights and-

“Steven, you are cold?” Xabi has pulled away having felt Steven’s shiver and is looking at him questioningly. “We should go inside, if you- oh, I have made you all- this. Your shirt.” He gestures to the beer stain that has transferred over from where they had been pressed against each other.

Stevie shrugs it off. “Don’t worry about it. Just a shirt. It can be washed, y’know.” But with Xabi no longer under his arm he is beginning to feel the chill of what is more early morning than anything else and he shivers again, this time actually due to the temperature. Xabi seems to take that as an answer and pushes him inside. “We should get sleep,” he says, voice decisive even as he stumbles into the room after Stevie, still not quite sober enough to walk in a straight line, and slides the glass door closed behind them with a bit of a slam. “So that when we see the supporters back home tomorrow we do not look like the dead, hmm?” He laughs at his own words and lets himself flop down onto his bed, sprawling over the comforter.

“Alright, _mother,_ ” Stevie rolls his eyes but heads into the bathroom to wave a toothbrush around his mouth. When he emerges Xabi is still lying on his back on the bed, unmoved. His head is hanging over the edge and he meets Stevie’s eyes upside down and smiles. “Steven,” he says, joyfully as though he’d forgotten Stevie was even in the room and spreads his arms wide in the air above himself.

There’s a half-light of the orange streetlamps spilling in through the glass doors, highlighting Xabi’s face, broken in a smile that’s almost _too_ open, almost _too_ happy. Stevie’s heart nearly bursts just looking at it, and maybe it’s the alcohol still singing through his body, maybe it’s the fact that they’ve just won the Champion’s League (and _that’s_ not going to be a high he’ll come down from any time soon), but whatever it is: Xabi in that moment is the most gorgeous thing Stevie’s ever seen.

He only stands there meeting Xabi’s eyes for a moment, but in that moment something shifts in the air, a sudden quiet change like a television being turned on in an adjacent room lending a subtle background hum only noticeable underneath his fingernails or in the back of his skull, and it doesn’t vanish even when Stevie moves and breaks eye contact. He circles back around Xabi’s bed to his own and Xabi rolls over and swivels so that he’s on his stomach facing Stevie again. Only there’s something in his gaze now, something a little darker and a little anticipatory and Stevie knows that Xabi felt the shift as well, that Xabi had noticed the moment.

Stevie sits on his bed and begins studiously removing his shoes and socks, trying to focus his humming mind on the task and not on the gaze lasered onto him from the man just a metre away, but despite his best efforts he can feel his eyes being drawn as if by magnets back up to meet Xabi’s.

The look Xabi is levelling at him is far too clear for someone as intoxicated as he is and Stevie gets the sense that Xabi knows exactly what’s happening here, maybe more so than Stevie does himself.

The air is thick between them. Heavy. Difficult to breathe.

Xabi has propped himself up on his elbows, and he reaches out to brush a finger across Stevie’s knee. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Stevie says back, slightly breathlessly.

And he knows. All of a sudden.

He wants to kiss Xabi.

The burn of Xabi’s lips on his is still lingering from hours ago and he wants, oh god he _wants._ He’s still ablaze with that love – _his team, his city, his supporters-_ only now his mind is whispering _Xabi_ almost frantically and Xabi is looking at Stevie like he wants to embrace him, devour him, to cover every inch of his skin with his hands and mouth and burn him through and through and Stevie, Stevie _wants him to do it._

He knows what Xabi looks like naked, has seen him in the showers before and changing into and out of his kit. He knows the light hair under his arms and running over his chest down to his groin, knows the taper of his waist and the broadness of his shoulders. But now he’s imagining all that laid out on the bed, that expanse of flat stomach bared just for him, not only to look but to touch, to claim in some indefinable way. There’s a thrumming in his veins and he _wants._

“We are champions,” Xabi says, scraping his nails lightly over Stevie’s knee and there’s something there, some subtle emphasis on the _we_ that Stevie reads into and it makes him shudder. He lets himself fall sideways onto his shoulder against the pillow, trying to calm his breathing.

 “Hey Xabi?” He says lightly, only a brief tremor in his voice to betray the heat gathering low in his stomach. There’s still uncertainty holding him back.

“Mm?”

“I’m glad we won. You were brilliant.”

Through the dark he picks out the small smile curling around Xabi’s lips. “I’m glad also.”

Stevie grins at him almost giddily. “Not going to tell me I was brilliant too?”

Xabi laughs, teasing despite the burning in his eyes. “We would not want you getting- a, a what? A swell head?”

“A _swelled_ head.”

“Yes, that. You don’t need that, it would slow you. And God knows you are already slow enough.”

“Alright, listen you-” Stevie sits up and dives at Xabi, grabbing his arms and tussling him over on the bed. Xabi yells out, giggling. “Steven! Ow- stop!”

“Tell me I’m a brilliant footballer!”

Xabi is laughing into the comforter where Stevie’s got him planted face-down. “Yes, yes,” he says, muffled but discernable. “You are a brilliant footballer, captain of stars, the best captain, the best football club, you’ll never walk alone, everything everything! Let me up, Steven, I am suffocating!”

Stevie loosens his grip on Xabi’s forearms, letting him twist over onto his back and take exaggerated, dramatic gulps of air, to which Stevie snickers. He’s holding himself on his hands over Xabi on the bed, and the brief moment of familiar, friendly squabbling is suddenly overtaken once more by that electric heat humming between them, and Stevie’s earlier imaginings of Xabi spread out on the bed are rising to the forefront of his mind. He can see himself carefully unbuttoning Xabi’s ruined shirt, running his hands over the warm skin, kissing his way from Xabi’s soft mouth down the planes of his chest to the waistband of his trousers, and lower.

It would be so easy. Xabi is lying there beneath him, watching him with those dark eyes, shadowed but open in a way that Stevie knows, if he just leaned down, Xabi would have him. And he would have Xabi.

He’s afraid, suddenly. It’s a feeling not dissimilar to the phantom plummet sometimes experienced before falling asleep: a violent start, dragging him from his hazy state and into something colder. It’s not a fear of rejection or a fear that he’s making some mistake in interpreting the situation. It’s something a bit more insidious, a tiny hissing voice crawling around the hard floor of his mind, sneering, taunting, reminding. Little words that if exposed Stevie would try to defend as realism but in truth are something more like hate. Directed inward, directed outward, anchored immovably to the recesses of his mind. He’s afraid, and ashamed of admitting it so instead he grabs onto the first escape he can think of.

Stevie knows that the two of them are at this point clearheaded enough to be unable to blame whatever was happening on the alcohol. While being intoxicating in its own right there was something terribly sobering about the eye contact between them. He knows this and he knows that Xabi knows as well, but he feigns drunkenness, letting himself fall down onto the bed next to Xabi with a laugh that came out only slightly strained.

“I’m off me head, mate,” he says, injecting a light-hearted tone into his voice quite at odds with how he feels.

There’s a slight pause in which both their fates hang in the balance. Lying there next to Xabi, arms pressed against each other with their elbows all lined up, part of Stevie (a larger part than he cares to think about) hopes desperately that Xabi isn’t, well, isn’t as _cowardly_ as he himself is being. Hopes that Xabi is free of a little hissing voice of his own. Hopes that Xabi will call him out on his bullshit. Hopes that Xabi will tell him to shut up and just- will pull him back and look at him with those eyes again. Will make him admit that he wants this too.

But after the short gasp of silence, Xabi just laughs his own version of Stevie’s forced chuckle. “I know how you feel.”

It’s a loaded statement.

Xabi subtly, almost unnoticeably, shifts away. The touch between them doesn’t linger. Both eye contact and physical contact are now broken and Stevie stares at the ceiling and tells himself that it’s relief rather than disappointment that he’s feeling. He wonders what’s going through Xabi’s head. He wonders, he thinks, he hopes.

There’s a stilted sense in the air but Xabi breathes evenly as they lie there, the electricity dying down into familiar camaraderie again. They have pulled back from the precipice of whatever they had been about to leap into and are firmly back in safe territory. Comfortable territory where Stevie can anticipate what will happen, where he knows what he is and isn’t allowed. Holistically it doesn’t seem any _less_ than what he’d felt before, it’s just different.

Different and a little bit disappointing, though he honestly has no one to blame but himself. He wonders if Xabi is also disappointed but shoves the thought aside. He’s made a choice. No good wringing his hands about it.

After a few minutes of silence Xabi shoves at him gently. “I need to sleep. Get your own bed, Gerrard.”

Stevie pretends to be asleep, rolling over and snoring loudly and Xabi punches him in the shoulder. “Off.”

Stevie cracks open an eye and squints at Xabi with a mock-wounded expression that guards a question. He’s seeking a delicate balance, a difficult balance but what’s so wonderful about Xabi is that everything with him has always been easy. And even this.

He thinks he glimpses a flash of gentle understanding before Xabi cocks an eyebrow as if to say _well?_ and Stevie sighs and hauls himself up, returning to his own bed.

Neither says anything further and there’s an air of finality as the sounds of covers being pulled back and pillows being shifted settle down into silence broken only by steady breathing. It’s the quiet of the small vacuum in a room after a door is closed. It’s the quiet of the last carriage of a train leaving the station.

 

When he wakes up Xabi is still asleep, lying on his stomach, his face turned towards Stevie. The curtains having been neglected the previous night, light through the glass door runs over his features, the faint gingery shadow of stubble on his cheeks, the elegant curve of his nose.

Stevie looks at him and knows. It’s the morning and he’s sober and yeah they’re still champions but that particular electric ringing is gone from his ears. He looks at Xabi and knows he can’t kiss him now.

Stevie tells himself he doesn’t want to anymore, anyway. Stevie tells himself this.

A few minutes later Xabi wakes up and says good morning, smiles. It’s a genuine smile, not the plaster one that Xabi sometimes drags across his face, but there’s something a bit resigned about it.

Stevie didn’t kiss Xabi. Xabi pretends he didn’t know Stevie was going to.

They are champions.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuses for this. But everyone needs to write an Istanbul fic at some point so this is just me doing my duty! I swear! Also one day I’ll actually write something where they do the kissing thing for real, promise.


End file.
